Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1866 - 3.2.2. Tags

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### 3.2.2. Tags

Tags delimit elements such as headings, paragraphs, lists, character highlighting, and links. Most HTML elements are identified in a document as a start-tag, which gives the element name and attributes, followed by the content, followed by the end tag. Start-tags are delimited by `<' and `>'; end tags are delimited by `</' and `>'. An example is:

       <H1>This is a Heading</H1>

Some elements only have a start-tag without an end-tag. For example, to create a line break, use the `<BR>' tag. Additionally, the end tags of some other elements, such as Paragraph (`</P>'), List Item (`</LI>'), Definition Term (`</DT>'), and Definition Description (`</DD>') elements, may be omitted.

The content of an element is a sequence of data character strings and nested elements. Some elements, such as anchors, cannot be nested. Anchors and character highlighting may be put inside other constructs. See the HTML DTD, 9.1, "HTML DTD" for full details.

NOTE - The SGML declaration for HTML specifies SHORTTAG YES, which means that there are other valid syntaxes for tags, such as NET tags, `<EM/.../'; empty start tags, `<>'; and empty end-tags, `</>'. Until support for these idioms is widely deployed, their use is strongly discouraged.

Next: 3.2.3. Names

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1866 - 3.2.2. Tags